Taiwanese memory manufacturer Team Group warned that the global memory shortage could worsen considerably in 2027, leaving PC makers and consumers struggling to buy components no matter how much they are willing to pay.
Team Group chief executive Chen Ching-wen told investors during the company’s 2 November earnings conference that the industry had yet to experience the worst of the shortage. He expects the most difficult period to run from the fourth quarter of 2026 through the second quarter of 2027, with supply and demand unlikely to balance before the second half of 2028.
According to TechSpot, the world’s biggest memory manufacturers have already committed much of their future production to customers willing to sign long-term agreements. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron have reportedly sold out their 2027 output, leaving smaller manufacturers competing for whatever components become available.
Chen said the shortage had reached the point where having a supply agreement no longer guaranteed receiving enough chips. Team Group has consequently been forced to purchase additional components on the spot market, where prices are running between 30 and 50 per cent above contract rates.
“We have contracts but can’t get enough volume, so we have to go to the spot market and pay a premium to grab supply,” Chen said.
The price increases have been spectacular. Contract prices for individual 16Gb DDR5 chips climbed from $8.70 in October 2025 to approximately $48 by September 2026, an increase of more than 450 per cent. DDR4 prices have been heading in the same direction as manufacturers reduce production of older memory technologies.
The shortage is largely being driven by the enormous demand from data centres, which are consuming increasing quantities of high-bandwidth memory and conventional DRAM. Major manufacturers are concentrating investment on products that generate the highest returns, leaving fewer chips available for ordinary PCs, smartphones and other consumer electronics.
Team Group’s financial results illustrate how the industry has changed. Business-to-business customers represented 64.6 per cent of its revenue in the first nine months of 2026, compared with 24.6 per cent in the same period last year.
Consumer sales fell from 75.4 per cent to 35.4 per cent of revenue over the same period. The company says it is responding to changing market demand, although the figures suggest that selling memory to businesses has become considerably more attractive than supplying people who want to upgrade their PCs.
The shortage has been particularly profitable for Team Group. Third-quarter revenue increased approximately 33 per cent sequentially to NT$10.14 billion, while net profit rose nearly 50 per cent from the previous quarter.
Chinese manufacturers CXMT and YMTC have been expanding their production, but Chen believes they cannot provide sufficient additional capacity to stabilise the market. Together, the companies have captured nearly 10 per cent of the memory business, although their pricing remains closely tied to international market conditions.
Investment bank Citi has reached a similarly gloomy conclusion. Its latest forecasts suggest global DRAM demand will rise 28 per cent in 2027, while supply grows 24 per cent. NAND demand is expected to increase 26 per cent while production grows 22 per cent.
Citi expects the resulting supply deficits to reach 3.8 per cent for DRAM and 3.3 per cent for NAND. Although these estimates improve on its earlier predictions, they still suggest another year of shortages and expensive components.
The PC industry is divided on how long the situation will last. Acer chief executive Jason Chen expects mainstream component prices to begin falling during the second half of 2027, although he believes high-end memory will remain difficult to obtain.
The Acer boss has suggested that some suppliers have an interest in keeping the shortage going because it protects their profit margins. Team Group’s chief executive is less optimistic about an early recovery, warning that inexpensive memory might not become readily available until 2029.
For PC manufacturers, the immediate challenge is deciding how much of the higher component cost to pass on to customers. With memory prices already affecting the cost of complete systems, another year of shortages threatens to make upgrading an ageing machine increasingly expensive.
